Navigating Career Pathways: Employment vs. Entrepreneurial Ventures by Dr. Badri Narayan, School of Management

A conversation hosted with faculty Dr. Badri Narayan, School of Management, Associate Dean, Hindustan Institute of Technology and Science, discussing how business students and young professionals should evaluate starting a business versus pursuing corporate employment. 

Transcript

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Hello everyone, hi guys. Uh this is Hate Speech Podcast. Uh today I'm here with Dr. Badrina Rainand, Associate Dean of the School of Management at Hindusan Institute of Technology and Science. Today I'm here with an interesting discussion with you on a very interesting topic, a very curious topic which always crosses the minds of people at different age groups, at different points of time in their life, I would say. It's a very curious question which comes across when we hit a glass ceiling. Whether a job or an entrepreneurship, should I choose a job or should I be on my own as an entrepreneur? This is something a very intriguing question in the minds of people at different age groups. If you are a student, then certainly with a lot of bubbling enthusiasm, you come up with a very bright project idea, which is winning prices across. This is going to be having a potential to be launched as a business, and uh I can be on my own. You will be at a lot of forums where you will see the potential of that getting converted into an enterprise. When as a mid-carrier professional, you're looking around, you see the same boring routines in the office, you're no longer thrilled by the kind of uh experiences that you go through. So then you also decide to become an entrepreneur. Being in this environment or in this business for quite some time, having gained all the experience, you know the nook and corner of how this business works. Why don't I start something on my own? There could be a bunch of women who would be relocating based on the family reasons. Their husband is getting transferred, the family is uh moving away to a new location, the child is enrolled for an important course or a medical seat or some other thing. They go to a new city, new place, they leave all their career and go there along with the child. So they may also be thinking whether should I take up a job, should I give a commitment, or should I take some entrepreneurship? And now, with this digital social media taking over, we saw during the COVID period a lot of Instagram entrepreneurs who poured out of the social media, and they were able to reach out to those people who were following them on the socials and converting them into their customers for the products or services which they paste into their social media. So we saw a rise of uh online social media based, digital marketing based enterprises. The million dollar question remains there is still a voice that is heard, whether that is inside you or within the family, or this question lingers onto you. Should I pursue a job or should I choose entrepreneurship? I read an interesting article, a blog post rather, almost a decade ago, I would say, but still the logic is relevant. I thought it is good to recall that a lot of hype is all around entrepreneurship. But we also see the fact remains like not everybody succeeds as an entrepreneur. The statistics say one percent of the proposals which are submitted to the investors get funded, and uh two of the businesses launched succeed, that means 98 do not succeed. That is a different uh story altogether. Today, let's see about like this decision point as a personality, what is going to suit me, whether it is a job or is it an entrepreneurship as a career. Okay, let's go a little bit into the personal choices that somebody has. Of course, uh, we see umding examples around us where by virtue of their life and the twists and turns which somebody faces, people choose to become entrepreneurs, or they're forced to become entrepreneurs. A successful entrepreneur today, the founder and CEO of uh the Coven Care Group, his life forced him into a corner where he had to start something to survive in his life. So today he is a million-dollar enterprise, a multi-million dollar business, one of the most successful FMCG groups of this country, the Coven Care Limited, running the most successful brands, sharing the shelf space across the stores. That is a life decision that he has taken. But some of us are privileged to make a choice. If you want to work, you work, or you want to be on your own, you can be on your own. But from where that want comes, here are some pointers which I read in that blog post. I thought that would be helpful for somebody who is just in the cusp of uh deciding this thinking. One side of your heart says, like, go ahead, do this, the other side says stick on to your job. One fundamental this thing, like uh before choosing an entrepreneurship full-time, you have to also take a view on your finances, like what are your financial commitments, what is the volume of money that you require for managing your normal life. I would personally say don't mess up with a personal life or the life of the family and pursue a passion because 80% of Indian businesses are family-owned businesses, by the way. That means family in Indian society has a very important place in a business. So, without the support of the family, no business can survive, whatever stake you have in the business. So, understanding the without compromising the basics for your family, yourself, you have to think of an idea that will become a potential entrepreneurship idea. So, look at your finances, what are the bills payable, what is the minimum money that you will require, and whether your business idea will be able to generate that kind of a money which will satisfy your basic needs, still generate a surplus which can be reinvested into the business for its growth. Will you be able to build a kind of a or will you be able to build a kind of a corpus through your savings or through some other methods of investment so that you are able to feed your family finances through that stream and then parallelly work on your business idea separately? So, probably taking a look on your finances, your health, the stage of your life, all this matters, your risk-taking ability can be decided. Probably you need you can sit and speak with a financial advisor in this regard, and uh up to your retirement planning, so so many things have to be taken care of. That is a fundamental thing given that when you are just pushed towards choosing between a job or an entrepreneurship. If you are a person who wants a kind of a structured this thing, like a timetable morning, I will do this uh first one hour. I'll do this, second one hour I'll do this, third hour I'll do this, or Mondays I do this, Tuesdays I do this, you kind of a structure 9 to 6 kind of a routine you are looking for, then choose a job. Probably a job gives you that kind of a 12 days casual leave, three days medical leave, 10 days of yearned leave, mandatory leave of uh 15 days. If you are a person who is uh looking at kind of uh or your life, your commitments are expecting you to have this kind of a structure, you must be available with the family or with your other interests. You need a structure, then you can go for a job, which probably has a fixed schedule, and you all have the privileges of availing a leave and not showing up for work. When it comes to entrepreneurship, you are the boss, you are on a medical leave. Who is going to approve that leave? Today, a customer has uh given you an appointment, you have to go and have a meeting. That is a dull, boring Monday morning. You don't want to get up and go meet the customer. That's not possible. Suddenly in the evening, seven o'clock, your uh potential client calls up and says, Okay, I'm free at eight o'clock. Can we meet at the coffee? This is something which you need to take it up immediately. Okay, what uh what is the time to react? Is like where are you, and how long it will take for you to reach to that particular destination. So, that kind of a flexibility, if uh you can accommodate, you have that drive or passion. Okay, now I have to get this done. That kind of a flexibility working over weekends, working without timings, and that is like you presume this passion to be your life and you allow it to consume yourself and your whole passion, then that becomes a kind of a flexible approach. You can schedule any meeting you are available, and you are able to what till you reach a particular point of time and you have a bigger team to handle, and uh you can deploy people to handle such clients, then you can have uh you can go back to spend time on your leisure, of course. While building the business at the initial stages of entrepreneurship, you have to be flexible. I even remember one of our guest speakers, uh Madam Shri Vidya, who is running the Ravendra Securities Private Limited, when she was narrating her story to our students. So she told that, like the initial days when she was the only person who was running this uh RSPL. She used to uh she was a mother of two daughters and she had to manage her family, a single mother, and going to this uh offices and meeting the HR managers, asking for her company to be recruited as their security services, a lot of flexibility was needed, like uh suddenly the meetings were fixed and they were negotiating for the cost, and she had to make a lot of rearrangements for this thing. Suddenly, somebody says we are dropping out, and somebody says we need additional people. A lot of uh flexibility in approach you need to have to handle such situations. So, if you are a person who enjoys such kind of challenges and you have a sense of achievement by being flexible, yes, getting back to your shape like a rubber band that is uh very much suitable for entrepreneurship. And if you choose entrepreneurship, please develop this kind of an attitude or approach towards this. So the structure which versus flexibility is the first bucket. If your ball goes into structure, then you are choosing a job. If your ball goes into flexibility, you are choosing an entrepreneurship. Next, are you a person who expects rewards for whatever you do? That is something which happens in a job. In a job situation, you do something good, you might be rewarded. I'm not saying you will be rewarded, you might be rewarded. There is a possibility, there is an appraisal process, uh, there are there is an employee of the month, there is a team uh star of the month, so you have a possibility to be appreciated, to be rewarded for your efforts. Uh, you get a very beautiful appreciation mail from your reporting officer saying, like so-and-so has done a wonderful work by staying awake throughout the night for doing this and getting this project through. We congratulate you are an amazing person. Then everybody puts a like on that, that becomes a kind of a rewarding experience for you. If this kind of a situation excites you, then you choose a job. When you choose entrepreneurship, when you do a good work, that becomes a duty. It is like a thankless mother's job. Like you don't go and thank the mother for being so kind to you, making your food and taking care of you when you were a baby. All this you'd never do, but still, she does that for her own interest. Of course, I am your child, you have to do it for me. That's your duty, we say. So that is a kind of an approach people take on you when you run an enterprise. Of course, this is your enterprise, you have to be responsible. What nonsense! So, who will come and appreciate you? You cannot expect, but you should have a risk mindset, like you should be uh thrilled by challenges if your adrenaline levels are high when you take risk, when you enjoy roller coaster rides, and uh you are super cool about it. You look forward for the next roller coaster ride. Probably entrepreneurship is your cup of tea. So you just now visually decide whether you are going to throw your ball into the reward bucket or the risk bucket. If you are throwing into the reward bucket, you are choosing now. I I'm I am uh definitely seeing that you are scoring yourself both sides. If you like structure, you are choosing a job. If you like flexibility, if you are okay with flexibility or you're willing to adopt flexibility, then you choose entrepreneurship. You expect rewards, you choose a job. Whereas you uh think of risks as your cup of tea and you uh your adrenaline level goes up, taking higher levels of risk, then entrepreneurship is for you. So now it is two criteria both sides. Next, the third criteria. If you have a growth ambition that is like this time, this year I am uh earning 12 LPA, next year I want to earn 20 LPA from 12 LPA to 20 LPA. So if this is the kind of a personal growth, the personal credit, personal growth that you are looking at, then you should look for a job that gives you this kind of a remuneration or a growth potential, a career which gives you this kind of a growth potential. Whereas even you can be the Ratant Tata or the Birla, but the instinct of entrepreneurship is survival. Every day an enterprise survives against competition, it wins over competition and it is resulting in its survival. All these decades and years, some brands have survived, and the mindset of entrepreneurship is towards survival. So if you are okay with that mindset, every day you fight back as if that is your day one, like how they say you would have heard enough uh of the superstars of the Indian cinema, like whether it's Amitabhana, Rajani Kant. All the youngsters who work with them, they say they come to work uh the shoot every day, like as if this is their first day of shoot. They are so humble, they listen to the director, they come well prepared, they are on time, they uh look for instructions from the director and they obey their command and they humbly go back to their places. So this is a kind of a survival mindset. You you ask Rajnikantha, Ramita Bhakchan, they say this is a job we respect, is a very uh precious opportunity which we have got, which many millions of people haven't got it. So we have to respect that, and we don't do this, somebody else will come and take it over. So it's an instinct of survival, even if you are a superstar. So that kind of a mindset is an entrepreneurial mindset. The next set of constraints me like if your ball goes into the growth basket, then that is a choice is a job. Whereas your ball is uh basketed into this uh survival basket, then you are choosing entrepreneurship, so it is structure for a job, flexibility for entrepreneurship, reward for a job, and risk for entrepreneurship, growth for a job, and survival for entrepreneurship. Now I have given you three pointers on each side. Now you have your score with you. You need not tell it to me, you can have it scored. So at the end of this game, you will be able to understand where you are tending to. This is no judgment that you are cut out for only job, you are cut out only for entrepreneurship. This is a kind of an indication of how you are thinking now. Probably whichever side you want to take, you need to train your mind accordingly. When you are in a job, many a times what we expect the computer should work, there must be proper internet connection. There is uh there must be AC switched on, and there must be housekeeping stuff, there must be a coffee machine, there must be a good interior done in your cabin, and uh your printer must work properly. And any anything that you ask for, you send a request that should be delivered at your desk. There must be a punch-in, punch out, you send a mail to HR, those guys should be able to solve it. So, this turn all around, you have a cab to pick up, you have a cabin to sit, you have an AC to enjoy, you have uh snacks to have plentiful resources for doing a job. Like your privilege, we we all expect that we have to have all this privilege to do our job to put in our efforts that will make us comfortable and help us to work at our best. If you are a person looking for this kind of things at your command, the resources at your command to do your best, then you are cut out for a job. Like the enterprise whom you work for, they prepare everything for you. You go and serve that place with your efforts and you come back. So, if you're looking for plentiful resources at your command, then your ball goes into the job basket. The other side, entrepreneurship is about you may not even have a place to sit, but you will have to give employees a place to sit. You may not have uh uh the time to have your food, but you may have to give a proper cafeteria for your staff members. You may not be having the bandwidth to travel in a business class, but still, you may have to give the travel allowance to your team. So, this is a kind of a situation an entrepreneur encounters, like whether you have money or not, on the 30th of the month, you should make arrangements to pay the salary for your team members, your suppliers, all this comes up. So, if you can operate with limited resources for yourself, or you are okay with survival uh requirements, you get some food, you get some place to sit and work. All the big stories that we hear. Google started in a dormitory and uh Infos started in the car garage. Many entrepreneurs who are highly successful today started with very humble limited resources, nothing else. So, this mindset of growing out of your resources and being at your best, even in the worst of constraints, that is a mindset of entrepreneurship. So that spark, if it is there with you, then probably you can look for entrepreneurship. I'm not trying to tell that entrepreneurship journey is all by a path full of thoughts and things like that, but passion that you enjoy, that you take this route to build the path for others and you establish something that is going to solve the problems of a bunch of people. So, this is something probably you should uh scan through when it comes to a difference between a job and an entrepreneurship. Whether you like structure, flex a quick revision, if it is structure versus flexibility, if it is structure, you want you can take a job, if it is flexibility that you can adapt to, you can take up entrepreneurship. If you expect rewards for anything that you do, then you take a job. If you are willing to take risk to go to the next level, then you take entrepreneurship. If your mindset is looking for a growth, whether you are better than yesterday, and you may you are looking at more within, then that is a growth mindset. You can take up a job where job fetches you an opportunity for growth, whereas entrepreneurship it's an instinct of survival. You everyday survive in a business, and if you can play around with limited resources, you take up entrepreneurship, you want all resources at your command for doing your work, then you take up a job. So, this is a kind of an initial thought process that you can have to choose between a job and entrepreneurship. Please be aware that this is not a comprehensive list, this is not going to judge you or brand you that if you don't choose these dots and these extremes are definitely going towards this job or entrepreneurship. This is a kind of a thought process, so you can think about it and you can decide on this further. So let's discuss in further sessions on some other interesting topic. I hope this podcast would have given you some kind of a kick start to find out, kind of introspect where you belong to, which world you belong to, whether to the world of jobs or the world of entrepreneurs. Good luck, decide and go forward. Who knows? You will discover a new you in the process of this analysis and the journey of life. Enjoy whatever you do, do whatever you do with a lot of passion, whatever you do with sincerity and with the whole of your heart will definitely yield good results. Wish you all the best. See you in the next podcast. Thank you.